Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (1975)

“Again, this is a band I resisted for the same reasons as Led Zeppelin – everybody was into them, and I wanted to find my own bands. Other than The Beatles, I didn’t want to like the big, famous bands. Floyd would come into town and take things over when they played the stadium.

“Years later, my best friend at the time, Nicholas Schaffner, who wrote The Beatles Forever and Saucerful Of Secrets, took me on tour with Pink Floyd when he was doing interviews for his book, and that’s when I really got into that group and what David Gilmour could do with a guitar. We would have dinner every night before the show, and David would walk from the table, located literally five feet from the stage, and play songs like Comfortably Numb. It was pretty astonishing – and eye-opening. I was blown away.

“I wanted to pick a Pink Floyd album that really spoke to me about how I felt about David’s guitar playing, along with the sentiment of the record and how it’s about the bandmate they lost. The opening riff on Shine On You Crazy Diamond, what he can do with those few notes – it’s unbelievably beautiful. The sound reminds me of church bells. That a guy who can really rip chose to just use a couple of well-placed notes says a lot about the breath of his vision and his poetic approach to the guitar.”